Verstappen left the road on three occasions in an uncharacteristically scrappy day from the championship leader.

While none of the offs were especially serious, they highlighted the struggles he and Red Bull Racing had in finding a good balance in the RB20.

Verstappen suffered a snap of oversteer turning into the Variante Alta in opening practice, before touring through the gravel at Acque Minerali later in the first hour of track action. He then pinched a brake to skip across the gravel at Rivazza in Free Practice 2.

“Difficult day,” Verstappen said.

“Just difficult to get a good balance and just really not feeling comfortable in the car.

“Moving around a lot, it’s very easy to lose the car, so a few things that we have to look at because [today] was just bad.”

Verstappen was only fifth fastest in the opening practice session, 0.250s off the pace laid down by Charles Leclerc.

In Free Practice 2, that more than double to a 0.541s deficit as the Dutchman slipped to seventh – one spot better than his Red Bull Racing team-mate.

Of concern for Verstappen is that he struggled for both long-run pace and single-lap speed.

“The long run was really bad,” he explained.

“Definitely a few things that we have to improve if we want to be competitive tomorrow.

“It can’t be worse than we had today,” he added of the work the team has to do ahead of qualifying.

“We’ll look at a few things that we can do better for tomorrow.

“But year, looks like the others took a step forward and from our side, just a bad day.”